The Big Bad Wolf

agreement. “No, we are
not
sure, are we? One of them had on a sailor’s cap. Could have been the woman from King of Prussia. Do you agree with the opinion voiced about the disconnect between this abduction and the others? Has the pattern been broken?”
    I considered the question, trying to get in touch with my gut reaction to what I’d heard so far.
    “No,” I finally said. “There doesn’t even have to be a behavioral pattern. Not if the abduction team is working for money. I’m inclined to think they probably are. I don’t see these as crimes of passion. But what bothers me are the mistakes. Why are they making mistakes? That’s the key to everything.”

Chapter 35
    LIZZIE CONNOLLY HAD no sense of time anymore, except that it seemed to be moving very slowly, and that she was pretty sure she was going to die soon. She would never see Gwynne, Brigid, Merry, or Brendan again, and that made her incredibly sad. She was definitely going to die.
    After she was locked away in the small room/closet, she’d spent no time feeling sorry for herself or, worse, feeling panic, letting it rule her for whatever time she had left. Certain things were obvious to her, but the most important was the reality that this horrible monster wasn’t going to let her go. Ever. So she had spent countless hours plotting her escape. But realistically she knew that it wasn’t likely to happen. She was bound with leather straps, and though she’d tried every possible maneuver, every twist and turn, she hadn’t been able to break loose. Even if she did by some miracle, she could never overpower him. He was probably the strongest man she’d ever seen, twice as powerful as Brendan, who had played football in college.
    So what could she do? Maybe try something during a bathroom or food break—but he was so attentive and careful. At the very least, Lizzie Connolly wanted to die with dignity. Would the monster let her? Or would he want her to suffer? She thought about her past history quite a lot, and took comfort in it. Her growing-up years in Potomac, Maryland, spending nearly every spare hour at a nearby stable. College at Vassar in New York. Then the
Washington Post.
Her marriage to Brendan, the good times and the bad. The kids. All leading up to that fateful morning at Phipps Plaza. What a cruel joke life had played on her.
    During the past few hours locked up in the dark, she’d been trying to remember how she had gotten through other terrifying experiences. She thought that she knew: with faith, with humor, and with a clear understanding that knowledge was power. Now Lizzie tried to remember specific examples . . . anything that might help.
    When she was eight years old she’d needed surgery to correct a straying eye. Her parents were always “too busy,” so her grandparents had taken her to the hospital. As she watched them leave, tears had streamed from her eyes. When a nurse came in and saw the tears, Lizzie pretended that she’d bumped her head. And somehow she got past the lonely, terrifying moment. Lizzie survived.
    Then, when she was thirteen, there was another terrifying incident. She was returning from a weekend with a friend’s family in Virginia and had fallen asleep in the car. When she woke up she was groggy and confused and completely covered with blood. She remembered staring out into the gloomy darkness and slowly beginning to understand. There’d been an automobile accident while she was asleep. A man from another car involved in the accident lay in the street. He wasn’t moving—but Lizzie believed she
heard
him tell her not to be afraid. He said that she could stay on earth or leave. It was her decision—no one else’s. She had chosen to live.
    “It’s my choice,” Lizzie told herself in the blackness of the closet. “It’s my choice to live or die, not his. Not the Wolf’s. Not anybody else’s.
    “I choose to live.”

Chapter 36
    THE NEXT MORNING, just about everybody attached to the White Girl task force assembled in the main conference hall at Quantico. We hadn’t been told much yet, just that there was breaking news, which was good; there had already been too much bureaucracy and wheel spinning for me.
    Senior Agent Ned Mahoney, the head of HRT, arrived when the room was already filled. He walked to the front, turned, and faced us. His intense gray blue eyes went from row to row, and he seemed more pumped up than usual.
    “I have an announcement. Good news for a change,” Mahoney